HanGil Eye Hospital, By Q&A, assess common knowledge about child’s strabismus

Most infants have their eyes turned inward? Parents with newborns often visit their ophthalmologist by the fact their child’s eyes turned inward. However, most cases are pseudo-esotropia which is caused by the low nose and therelatively wider glabella covering the inner side of sclera. As the child grows, the nose grows. Thus the skin is pulled to the nose, which allow the symptoms that the eyes seem to be turned inward disappear by themselves. Unless a child has been diagnosed with congenital esotropia which requires surgery, you can rest assured. There are no early symptoms of child’s strabismus. Each eye has six muscles that control its movement. These muscles harmonize and balance each other to control the movement of the eyes and help them see the same object when viewing. A baby completely develops to balance its eyes in six months. If eyes are misaligned even after 6 months of age, you should suspect strabismus. A child also turns his/her head in a direction where he/she has clear vision. If your child tends to head toward only one direction, you should suspect paretic strabismus. Stramisbus is not necessary to be corrected when young? Because children tend to use only one well-visible eye, the other eye may stop developing and become amblyopic (lazy eye). Amblyopia is no longer curable after the eyes are fully developed at the age of 5 or 6. Therefore, it is very important to notice symptoms in an early stage and treat the disease. When children often rub their eyes or when they cannot stare at an object, you must hurry to get their eyes examined. Stramisbus must be corrected by surgery? Not every case of strabismus requires a surgery. First, eyes are treated accordingly based on a refractive index test on myopia, astigmatism or hyperopia. If amblyopia occurred due to strabismus, eye patching method is often performed on one eye. Accommodative esotropia caused by severe hyperopia is treated by using appropriate glasses for hyperopia. Can you fix strabismus by acupuncture? Curing strabismus by acupuncture has not yet been verified in an objective manner. Occasionally, in the case of paretic strabismus, it can be considered that acupuncture has corrected when the eyes were in fact naturally healing themselves. Especially, congenital esotropia should be operated as soon as possible to prevent side effects such as diplopia and amblyopia.